Fact and Fiction

looking for trouble

part last: how to look

de Bill, K7WXW

Generally, when something in my shack stops working, I start with the basics: are the cables right? Have I turned on the power? Operator error is always the first hypothesis. When I’ve worked through the obvious stuff and don’t have a clue, I turn to the interwebs. Whatever I am trying to fix has probably been used, torn apart, repaired or modified by someone somewhere who subsequently wrote an email or blog post about it. A thorough search usually results in a pile of helpful files, bookmarks and contacts.

Today, unfortunately, my first search didn’t reveal much so I went to plan b: asking for a little help from my friends.

Email lists and forums – what we used to call bulletin board systems and newsgroups – are my connection to hacker/maker/ham communities that always know more than I do about whatever piece of gear, technology, or software I am trying to make work, repair or hack. There’s a vast store of tribal knowledge in such places and on most lists, people are happy to help you if you do your homework and ask specific questions. In this case, I distilled what I needed to know into two questions, wrote a paragraph describing the symptoms and what I’d done so far, and sent it to a QRP list where I hang out. I write an email like this once or twice a month and the result is almost always helpful.

My email netted me a schematic of the base unit, good troubleshooting advice, and references to several articles about SWR meters. The articles helped me understand the theory and gave me pointers to other articles, along with the callsigns of hams interested in SWR meters and directional couplers. I used this info to do another web search and soon had a stack of articles, schematics, and photographs, more than enough to figure out how the WM-1 works and how to fix it.

It took a couple of hours to go through all the material. Along the way I learned a lot about directional couplers and RF measurement. I was able to make some good guesses about nature of the problem, and come up with probable fixes. This is one of the benefits of I-have-to-fix-it-myself gear: figuring out what’s wrong with something is a great way to learn how it works.

I made a repair list and a plan for home brewing a new RF detector. I should be able to fix the old meter but building a new one will give me a backup and help me convert all the theory I’ve been digesting into a real piece of gear. Another perk of fixing-it-myself: the satisfaction that comes from using gear that I’ve repaired, modified or built myself.

I am glad I lost the habit of immediately replacing stuff that doesn’t work. My unusual meter spike has turned into a file of interesting articles, a repair project, a cool home brew project and a must-to-read list of RF design tutorials. I know a little more about SWR, RF power measurement, and directional couplers and I have had interesting conversations with three long time hams. If, three days ago, I was wondering about the wisdom of buying a flaky third-hand meter, today it appears to be a pretty good deal.